Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (62550)	10/14/2002 11:35:46 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

It didn't debunk religion at all. It was very sympathetic to Catholicism. I have no idea how you got that reading from the book........

To: Lane3 who wrote (62550)	10/14/2002 11:44:18 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 82486

The novel takes for granted familiarity with the idea that after the fall of the Roman Empire, knowledge was preserved in Western Europe almost exclusively in small, isolated communities of priests and monks during a centuries-long dark age, recopied by men who often understood little of the ancient manuscripts of which they were the custodians. There have been scores of novels set after a nuclear war in a neo-Medieval setting, but none so lovingly developed on the basis of a detailed study of the original Middle Ages. Miller remained a Catholic through much his life, though in tension with the Church, (though he turned bitterly against it toward the end, as is evident in Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horsewoman). Most SF is highly critical of religion when it touches on the subject at all; but Canticle is distinguished by its serious consideration of religious issues, even though it sometimes departs from orthodoxy. Miller obviously could not have anticipated Vatican II's movement away from the use of Latin, and he imagines its revival in the new Dark Age, with the English of our age functioning only as an archaic ceremonial language. wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/canticle.html

To: Lane3 who wrote (62550)	10/14/2002 11:49:39 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

A brilliant scientist asks a monk about the past, about the world of the Twentieth Century that created the bomb, "How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?" "Perhaps" (The monk replies)"By being materially great and materially wise and nothing else." Under the pessimism of the view that man will prevail only to repeat every mistake, there is one note of hope. It is a radical hope. It is not preached. It is simply there, woven into the framework of the story. There is available to man another way to live. Man does not have to confine himself to the search for wealth and power. So long as he does, he is doomed to the endless repetition of rise and fall of civilization, but it is the focus on wealth and power that dooms him. As the dying abbot of the monastery broods to himself, "'What does the world weigh?...its scales are crooked. It weighs life and labor in the balance against silver and gold. That'll never balance...It spills a lot of life that way...Do they laugh at us in heaven?' He wondered." There is another way. It is seen in little glimpses. There is the monk who reinvents electric lights and then shrugs at his accomplishment. Science is a hobby he takes pleasure in, but his true joy lies in being a monk, in serving God. In that moment, religion and science are seen, not in conflict, but in their proper perspective. Then at the end of the book, in the last pages of the final chapter, a woman appears who is like no other human being on the earth. Who is she? What does she represent? Is she a figure pointing the way to a future that can be different from the past? Or is she only a hallucination? We are not told. We are only left with a question. lostbooks.org

To: Lane3 who wrote (62550)	10/14/2002 11:53:23 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 82486

The Catholic Church makes a rare appearance in a genre work as the hero of the piece. Not only responsible for the preservation of knowledge through the long years of darkness, the brothers of the Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz are also the voice of conscience throughout the work. The work is actually the consolidation of three separately published novellas, the first set about 600 years after a nuclear war (presumed to take place in the 1960s); the second set 600 years after that, and the third yet another 600 years later. The first piece, despite a tragic ending, gives us some reason to hope. We learn about the Abbey, its founding, its reason for being. It becomes apparent that its brothers are, while themselves largely ignorant of exactly what they're preserving, still well-meaning. They're job is not to learn what we knew, but simply to preserve it by any means necessary. Their Memorabilia contains such diverse entries as a blueprint for a computer, and a shopping list for lunch. The second piece is far more ambiguous. Set on the edge of a new Renaissance, but against the backdrop of the rebirth of territorial ambition, the piece focuses on the tension between those who preserve, and those who which to make use of what's preserved, both within the Order, and outside it. In the end, there is a triumph of a kind for both sides -- the Abbey is vindicated as a true repository of ancient knowledge, and the scientist, Thon Thaddeo, gains greater understanding through access to that repository. But for both sides, it is a pyrrhic victory, and history begins to repeat itself. The third piece opens with the new civilisation's first atomic tests, coming at a time of increased tensions between the Texarkanan empire and a similar power in Asia. Hope is constantly mingled with terror, doubt, and outright resignation as the new era seems poised to bring itself to the same kind of end the old one did. Desperate to preserve humanity and its knowledge, the Order and the Church it serves have developed a plan for a new Exodus, to Alpha Centauri. But the secular powers that be have reasons not to want to see an unauthorized colonization attempt... These summaries hardly do justice to the stories involved, or the rich layers of irony woven throughout the book. At a time when an event like the Flame Deluge seemed imminent, this book served as a powerful warning as to what might come from such a catastrophe. At the same time, it suggested that such a catastrophe was almost inevitable (as it no doubt seemed in 1959, when the book was published in its final form), bound to happen not just once, but repeatedly while Humanity still existed. The work is also something of an act of faith on behalf of its author, in a genre which most often treats religion very badly indeed. While I don't share Miller's faith, I was still powerfully moved by such an eloquent and positive use of religion in a work of this kind. radiofreetomorrow.org